Another Worm Using Bush’s Theme Creeps Into PCs

"Check out this animation of Bush" is a message that pops up in a user's MSN Messenger. By clicking on the link that proceeds to show the president of America with his hair down, the user will unknowingly allow a worm to enter his/her computer that will likely perform some fast moves, say security specialists at MicroWorld Technologies. Net-security published this in news on May 22, 2007.

The worm called Worm.Win32.VB.au spreads using Spanish language messages. The message that reads 'mira esta animacion de bush' arrives from both known and unknown senders. In English the message translates to 'See this animation of Bush'. After managing to enter a victim's PC, the worm acts fast to send its malicious links to all addresses stored in the computer.

The technique of narrating fake and true stories about international political leaders has been popularly used to spread malware, says Rohini Sonawane, chief operating officer of MicroWorld. Smbedge published this as news on May 21, 2007.

From stories about death of Vladimir Putin, to Australian Prime Minister's heart attack, to the renaissance of Boris Yeltsin; these tricks have always prompted numerous computer users to react, said Sonawane. Smbedge published this in news on May 21, 2007.

Earlier majority of this kind of attacks used e-mails that sent sensational attachments containing malware to infect the user. But the malware in question using Instant Messaging activates with just a click of the mouse. The most effective social engineering tactic is one that doesn't allow the targeted user to think but react instantly, Rohini adds. Net-security published this on May 22, 2007.

The Win32.VB.au worm is written using Visual Basic language and its size is 122,880 Bytes. The malware forms some registry entries to become active whenever the computer starts up.

The Instant Messaging virus does not have any risky payload in its current version. But with similar techniques virus writers may deliver more harmful worms or Trojan Downloaders in the next surge of attacks. malware proliferation, possible by exploiting vulnerabilities in Instant Messengers, is another method that is increasingly drawing interests of virus writers.